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I love that “Groundhog Day” is in there!

Hitchcock, Rocky, Fargo Forever
The longest day of Bill Murray’s celluloid life just got a little longer…as in forever.
Groundhog Day is among the latest eclectic slate of films tapped for the National Film Registry, joining the likes of Mel Brooks’ 1974 comic opus Blazing Saddles, the Coen brothers’ Fargo, John Carpenter’s slasher classic Halloween, Sylvester Stallone’s original Rocky and Alfred Hitchcock’s romantic thriller Notorious.
The Library of Congress’ motion picture division, along with the National Film Preservation Board, unveiled on Wednesday the newest batch of 25 films to be saved for posterity.
The films were selected from more than 1,000 candidates nominated by the movie-loving public and ultimately voted on by the Library of Congress staff and advisers from the Preservation Board.
Inclusion on the registry guarantees that each cinematic gem will be preserved by archivists, ensuring, among other things, that generations to come will not be denied a chance to hear Rocky Balboa’s original “Yo, Adrian!” or Mongo’s explosive campfire antics in Blazing Saddles.
“The registry should not be seen as ‘the Kennedy Center Honors,’ ‘the Academy Awards’ or even ‘America’s Most Beloved Films,’ ” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said Wednesday, adding that the list is meant to “advance public awareness of the richness, creativity and variety of American film heritage.”
Since its inception in 1989, the registry has guaranteed that 450 films, including this year’s selections, would not rot away or sit neglected in a studio warehouse.
This year, the must-save flicks span the years from 1913 to 1996 and include indisputable favorites, like Notorious, headlined by the legendary Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, and those features that never quite made it to the mainstream, such as 1916’s The Curse of Quon Gwon, the earliest Chinese-American feature, and Daughter of Shanghai, a thriller starring the first Asian-American movie star, Anna May Wong.
Among the more well-known films making the cut: 1930’s The Big Trail, a western starring a then unknown John Wayne; Red Dust, the 1932 melodrama featuring the saucy pairing of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow; and sex, lies, and videotape, Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 breakthrough relationship film that reinvigorated independent cinema.
Also on the list: Mary Pickford’s big-screen debut in 1914’s Tess of the Storm Country; Flesh and the Devil, one of the last great silent films and the first pairing between a sacrificial Greta Garbo and John Gilbert; The T.A.M.I. Show (standing for “Teen Age Music International”), a 1964 concert film featuring the Rolling Stones and James Brown, among other legendary performers; and the 1929 musical St. Louis Blues, containing the only film recording of blues legend Bessie Smith.
Proving that reality is just as worthy as the world of make-believe, six documentaries were chosen: 1988’s Drums of Winter, chronicling the plight of the Eskimos; Harry Smith’s decades-spanning Early Abstractions #1-5, 7, 10, a moving collage of art, color, shapes and imagery; 1948’s In the Street, a children’s documentary about life in East Harlem; 1971’s Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, an avant-garde feature following filmmaker Jonas Mekas’ return to his birthplace; 1940’s Siege, showcasing the German bombardment of Warsaw; and Think of Me As a Person, a nearly two-decade chronicle of the relationship between a father and his Down syndrome-suffering son.
Rounding out this year’s registry selections: 1929’s Applause, an early sound-era film about burlesque theater from stage director Rouben Mamoulian; 1928’s The Last Command, which featured the Academy Award-winning performance of Emil Jannings as an exiled Russian general; and 1954’s A Time Out of War, a student film set in the Civil War that took home the Oscar for Best Short.